Refugee system overhaul on hold indefinitely

Backlog grows as plans delayed repeatedly

SUPPORT HAS DISSIPATED SIGNIFICANTLY BECAUSE OF A SERIES OF FACTORS, THE MOST IMPORTANT BEING THE EMERGENCE OF DONALD TRUMP.

OTTAWA • A Liberal election promise to overhaul the way asylum claims are handled has been postponed indefinitely despite that increased numbers of people seeking refuge that have put the system at risk, The Canadian Press has learned.

One of the options on the table, multiple sources have told The Canadian Press, is rejigging the historic Immigration and Refugee Board and handing some of its authority to the Immigration Department.

But those advocating for action before backlogs threaten the integrity of the system say they are up against a government that seems to have lost interest in spending more money or political capital to help asylum seekers.

The starting point is the designated country-of-origin system, which determines how quickly asylum claims are heard based on where they are from — a system that should, in theory, weed out unfounded claims faster.

Internal evaluations have shown that hasn’t quite worked and the system has drawn the ire of refugee advocates for creating a two-tier approach that includes unworkable timelines for hearing cases and their appeals.

The Liberals had been on the cusp of doing away with it, going even further than their original promise to use an expert panel to determine which countries belonged on that list.

But a planned January roll-out was postponed after the election of U.S. President Donald Trump and the subsequent Liberal cabinet shuffle that brought a new immigration minister.

Then in March, as the issue of illegal border-crossers dominated headlines and question period, plans to repeal the country-of-origin scheme were scrapped again, sources said.

They haven’t been rescheduled, even as the IRB itself has joined those saying the system needs to go.

“It would simplify our life from a case management point of view,” chairman Mario Dion said in an interview with The Canadian Press in March.

When the Liberals came to power and moved to fulfil a promise to resettle 25,000 Syrians, the government believed it had broad public support for refugees, said immigration lawyer and refugee advocate Lorne Waldman. Things have changed.

“The concern at the centre is that support has dissipated significantly because of a series of factors, the most important one being the emergence of Donald Trump,” he said.

“And I think the concern is amplified by the Conservative leadership race, where you have many of the candidates taking a very anti-immigrant posturing in their campaign.”

A spokesman for the Prime Minister’s Office said the overhaul to the countryof-origins policy was simply rescheduled by the department.

NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan pressed the government Monday on the delays, saying a growing backlog puts the integrity of the asylum system at risk.

Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen said the government continues to consult stakeholders and the IRB.

Claims have been rising steadily since the fall of 2015, though new numbers released Monday show they were down slightly in April of this year. Just over 3,000 people filed asylum applications in April, compared with 3,440 in March. So far this year, 12,040 claims have been filed, more than were lodged each of 2013 and 2014.

The issue shot to attention when hundreds of people began illegally crossing into Canada from the United States earlier this year.

“Our system is geared to deal with those fluctuations,” Hussen said Monday.

But if backlogs build, the government will find itself in the same situation that led to the country-of-origins policy in the first place — long waits for decisions that lure people with weaker claims to come to Canada, because they can work and access health care while they wait for a decision.

The IRB is aware of the problem and has instituted reforms, including allowing claims from Syria, Iraq, Eritrea and, as of June 1, Afghanistan, Burundi, Egypt, and Yemen to be decided without a hearing.

Those countries were selected because claims from there have high acceptance rates, there is a high volume of them and most are generally not complex.